Well, if you're reading this right now, you got here one of 2 ways: you actually went to the web page, or you used an RSS aggregator, which is my preferred method. Me, I use Bloglines, a web-based aggregator, which I absolutely LOOOOOOOVE. But what if you don't want to use a web-based solution? What then? Why, read "A survey of RSS aggregators", which will give you plenty of ideas! (Check out all of my posts on RSS.) ...

Do you live inside Visual Studio all day?  Ever wished you could keep track of all those RSS feeds in a side pane so you wouldn't need to exit to read the lastest cool news on Blogs.MSDN.com?  Well, your wait is over…and it's Open Source!  Get it here.   This open source plugin ships as part of SharpTools 2.0 and is a full-featured RSS / Blog aggregator which integrates into the familiar dockable panes of the Visual Studio.NET IDE. You're gonna love it when you start blogging from within the development environment! Features include: Support for folders or individual feeds Drag-and-drop support for feeds and folders Preview a new feed as you add it Easy control of all feed properties Automatic and on-demand refresh of feeds Automatic feed search based on a site URL Keyword searching for published feedsusing ...

Occasionally I get emails asking me what RSS reader I recommend. It's a pretty easy decision for me: Bloglines. It's the best I've used, and here are some reasons why. web-based built using open source technologies (yay!) persistent storage, so posts stick around until YOU decide to delete them easy to use, yet powerful interface new features added regularly free! (but it's so damn good I'd pay for it in a second) social software (so you can see others' feeds & they can see yours - but you can turn this off) suggestions for other feeds search engine, so you can search feeds good webfeed citizen: if 1000 Bloglines users have subbed to the same feed, Bloglines grabs it once & makes it available to 1000 users, instead of 1000 hits on the same webfeed There are many others, but hey, at least try it out. It's free! http://www.bloglines.com (Check out all ...

There is only one RSS/ATOM aggregator worth a tinker's damn: Bloglines. http://www.bloglines.com Yes, it's a Web site. Yes, it's an application - a Web service. Don't let that stop you. Bloglines is to RSS feeds what Gmail is to email. And, like Gmail, it runs on Linux, which is icing on the cake. Believe me, I've looked at all of them. I've been subscribing to RSS feeds since 2001, and I've tried a variety of clients on Windows and Linux. The best of them, by far, isn't a client you run on your machine; it's Bloglines, a Web application. Powerful, feature-complete (and very respondent to user suggestions), persistent storage - and it's free. It just does things "right" - or at least more right than everyone else. Check it out. And if you're looking for some RSS feed suggestions, pls feel free to check out my blogroll: http://www.bloglines.com/public/rsgranne ...

Akregator is a KDE-based RSS aggregator. Now, on the good side, it's integrated with KDE, & it's got some nice features that you can read about at kde.org.uk's "Akregator - App of the Month". In fact, it's going to be a part of KDE 3.4, which is cool: KDE is going to have an integrated aggregator. Cool. However, I don't really like Akregator for 2 reasons: Your data is stuck on one machine. I prefer to have my data easily available on any machine I'm using. Your data is not persistent (at least, I can't see that it is). In other words, there's no way to save RSS posts/feeds for later. That really kills it for me. So, while Akregator is nice and all, & I'm sure some people will find it useful, I'm going to stick to Bloglines, a web-based service. Bloglines just flat out rocks. However, for a more positive review of Akregator, read George Staikos' Bitten By the aKregator, from O'Reilly. Here's some links for ya: This blog's RSS feed, which ...

I read about 275 RSS feeds every day. How do I do it? Bloglines, baby. Free, powerful, web-based. There is nothing better. For a newbie's guide to setting up Bloglines, see "23 real simple steps to making your Internet life much better", from a columnist at The Chicago Tribune. He walks through the whole process, step by step. Show it to the RSS beginner in your life. And tell 'em to subscribe to this blog's feed, wouldja? (Check out all of our posts on Bloglines and RSS.) ...

If you're a Scott Granneman addict, don't despair. Scott has not left us, but he has shifted sideways a bit, joining the team at Download Squad, our blog about software and online services. Scott joins a dynamic team covering the latest in many kinds of on-screen experience. You can roll your own Download Squad experience in several ways: BOOKMARKS: Main blog: http://www.downloadsquad.com The Open Source category http://www.downloadsquad.com/category/open-source/ All Scott, all the time: http://www.downloadsquad.com/bloggers/scott-granneman/ RSS FEEDS Main blog: http://www.downloadsquad.com/rss.xml The Open Source category feed: http://www.downloadsquad.com/category/open-source/rss.xml The Open Source Weblog will remain exactly where it is, with its tremendous archive of blog entries. Ues it as a reference point, and aim your browser/newsreader at Download Squad for the continuous Open Source updating you've come to expect. Thanks for reading! ...

On the CWELUG mailing list, Robert asks for someone to explain podcasting. So I jump in with this message, which I hope you find useful. <begin my message> The following assumes you know what RSS is. If you don't, read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_29. 1. Get an RSS feedreader that supports enclosures (the mp3 files that are the basis for the podcasts). One that runs on your client machine will hopefully download enclosures; one that is web-based, like Bloglines, will provide a link to the enclosure that you can download. or, you can get a specific podcast client tool that only works with RSS feeds that contain enclosures, like these fine open source tools: a. Windows: ipodder b. Linux: bashpodder c. Mac OS X: ipodder You can find a list of podcast clients at http://www.ipodder.org/directory/4/ipodderSoftware. 2. subscribe to RSS feeds that contain podcasts/enclosures (later today I'll provide a list of podcast feeds I'm subscribed to). 3. Once ...

DistroWatch pointed this out, & I'm passing it along to you. Looking for web sites that contain oodles of info about the Live CDs that we all know, use, & love? Then check out LiveCD News, which advertises itself as "Daily News from the LiveCD World", and LiveDistro, which is quite similar. Both look like great sites, with constantly-updated news about the huge variety of Live CDs out there. And both provide RSS feeds so you can subscribe to the sites using your fave RSS reader. Here's the feed for LiveCD News, & here's the one for LiveDistro. Check 'em out, especially if you're a Live CD fan. I think you'll find them very useful. (Check out all of our posts on Live CD & Knoppix.) ...

When it comes to Unix history, Dr. Peter H. Salus is The Man. The author of the eminent A Quarter Century of UNIX, Dr. Salus is now publishing - for free - his new book about the history of FLOSS, The Daemon, the GNU, and the Penguin: A History of Free and Open Source, as he's writing it. Chapter 19 is the latest post, and from there you can link to the previous stuff. Want to keep up with Dr. Salus' book as it's published? Either subscribe to Groklaw's RSS feed, or search Groklaw periodically for "Peter Salus". The book is good, people - read it! (Check out all of my posts on history.) ...

Again, I've been cleaning out old emails & notes, & I remembered that back in July 2004 I was interviewed on NPR twice in one week, on two different shows, both times talking about dumping IE for anything else (although I really pushed Firefox hard). It all started with my column in SecurityFocus, Time to Dump Internet Explorer (still one of my faves!). Then I was interviewed for the 5-minute-long Minnesota Public Radio show "Future Tense" (requires Real player). If you subscribe to the RSS feed for Future Tense, you'll get a link to an MP3 enclosure of each show, which is just too cool. Then I was interviewed for "All Things Considered" (altho I wish I hadn't been called "radical", which you'll easily be able to understand if you listen). It was fun doing those interviews, and I've since gone on to do many more. If you're a Firefox devotee, check 'em out. ...

Yes, I'm talking about Firefox 2.0, not the brand spankin' new 1.5 that just came out. Want to know what's coming up in the future? Check out Firefox:2.0 Product Planning:Draft Plan, a wiki page used by Firefox developers, where you'll see that some of the new stuff includes "New Bookmark and History System", improvements in tabbed browsing, "Fully integrated RSS functionality", "Session saver" (man, that would be wonderful, so I wouldn't have to install an extension for this), "In-line spell check", & "Anti-phishing". These all sound wonderful, & there are more where that came from. I love 1.5, but I can't wait for 2.0! (And yes, I wrote a book about Firefox - Don't Click on the Blue E!: Switching to Firefox - that you might find interesting.) (Check out all of our posts on Firefox.) ...

Over the past year, this blog has pretty much been written by one person - me, Scott Granneman. There have been occasional forays by other folks, but I've been your open source blogger. Starting today, I'd like to welcome another blogger on this blog, Peter Cooper. I'm not going anywhere, but now Peter & I will be blogging together to make this blog even better, more relevant to you, & more fun. I'm excited to work with Peter, especially since he & I are somewhat complementary in our interests. I'm interested primarily in desktop apps, although coding & web dev also spark my interest, while Peter is the opposite: he's more interested in coding & developing, & less so much in desktop apps. Nice mix! So, who's Peter Cooper? Here ya go: Peter Cooper is a developer and serial entrepreneur with diverse interests across the worlds of technology and open source. He began to blog before the term even existed, six years ago, back when he worked for dot-com media companies ...

I've been using del.icio.us for quite some time, and it totally freakin' rocks. My good pal Robert Citek recently sent an email to the CWELUG list about del.icio.us that does a great job describing it and linking it to open source. Here 'tis: <begin Robert> del.icio.us is a bookmarking service. That is, rather than have your bookmarks stored locally with a specific browser, they are stored on a server at del.icio.us. This means that no matter where you go or what browser you use you have access to your bookmarks. You can also "tag" bookmarks, that is, classify a bookmark into one or more categories. In addition, the Firefox browser has some neat features which make marking and viewing del.icio.us bookmarks a snap. But to say its just a bookmarking service would be to an understatement. It can be more accurately described as a social bookmarking service. It's social because of some rather interesting features: you can view other people's bookmarks you can ...

The Weblogs, Inc. network features over 100 independent, unfiltered bloggers producing over 1,000 blog posts a week across over 75 industry-leading blogs. Each week we ask our bloggers to choose their top posts, which we bring to you in one easy-to-read weekly post. You'll find lots more links after the jump. Enjoy! ...